Violent crowds clashed with police outside a hospital in a remote Australian outback town on Thursday night, demanding the handover of an accused child killer.
According to CNN, police officers were seen dodging rocks and sticks in dramatic footage as rioters smashed police cars and set fire to a police van. Officers can be seen shooting rounds of tear gas at the crowd, and some smoking canisters are picked up and thrown back.
Northern Territory Police Commissioner Martin Dole described the scene in Alice Springs, which is considered the gateway to Uluru, formerly Ayers Rock, in the country’s desert heart, as “absolute anarchy”.
CNN also reports that Jefferson Lewis, 47, was arrested Thursday for the alleged murder of a five-year-old girl now known as Kumanjayi Little Baby, a pseudonym given by her family as a custom among their Indigenous Warlpiri people to avoid the utterance of a deceased person’s name during a mourning period.
Continuing, Lewis had been the subject of an intense manhunt in central Australia since Saturday night, after he was seen holding hands with the child in the hours before she was reported missing.
The report, however, states that after a four-day search that saw close cooperation between the Indigenous community and local police, the girl’s body was found by the edge of a river some five kilometres from where she was last seen.
CNN further reports that it wasn’t the police who tracked down Lewis, but an angry crowd, whom officers found beating the accused killer in an act of “vigilante justice.”
“At the time of his apprehension by us, he was unconscious, and he was in the process of being treated by St John’s Ambulance when they were set upon, as were the police,” Commissioner Dole said.
Lewis received “quite a severe beating”, Dole said, before being taken to Alice Springs Hospital, where a crowd of hundreds arrived to demand the alleged killer be turned over to them.
In a statement, a Warlpiri elder and family spokesperson called for calm in the wake of the violence.
“What has happened this week is not our way.”
“This man has been caught, thanks to community action, and we must now let justice take its course while we take the time to mourn Kumanjayi Little Baby and support our family,” senior Yapa (Warlpiri) elder Robin Granites said in a statement. (Culled/adapted from CNN)
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